Transcription
Hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic podcast, the show where we talk about business and marketing tactics to help your brands grow and scale.
And not the show where we learn about whether or not vanilla is a real ice cream flavor.
I’m all for it—I’m all for talking about vanilla as a real ice cream flavor—but we’re not going to talk about that here today.
I’m Ralph Burns, the founder of Tier 11.
And I am Lauren Petrullo, the founder of [ __ ] Media.
We are very glad that you joined us today.
We actually took an informal poll over at our Telegram thread.
It’s a thread, right, Lauren?
Because you love it.
It’s like a thread that just keeps unraveling and unraveling, and you can’t find anything.
It’s like a laundry basket.
You’re like, “Where are those jeans?”
“Somewhere.”
“Where’s my freaking matching red sock?”
That’s what Telegram feels like to me sometimes.
But no, it’s actually a great group.
I’m a little bit behind on some of the comments here today as I went through it, but that is over at PerpetualTraffic.com/telegram.
So will we keep Telegram with the new leadership in place here at Perpetual Traffic?
I don’t know.
Lauren, you’re way more techy than I am.
But the point is, if you want to go over there, you can actually interact with us.
Tell us what you like, tell us what you don’t like, and also introduce yourself.
We’ll make sure that you feel right at home in that Telegram thread.
That’s where we get a lot of ideas for today’s show as well as future shows.
I appreciate you all.
It’s a great group because everyone answers each other’s questions.
We don’t even have to do it as much, which is very cool.
And it’s free!
So maybe we should start charging for it.
Maybe that’s what we should do.
I mean, well, like, no.
All right, to be determined.
I think there’s stuff that’s awesome that can be free because, again, the community is giving so much.
They’re really giving a lot and like kind words of feedback because you have some individuals that are newer on their journey and some that are managing, you know, multi-million dollar accounts on a regular basis.
It’s a really good mixture of those in the game and those strategizing.
Yeah, it’s a very cool mix.
And I think with most podcasts, you don’t have the opportunity to interact within a community.
Yes, you can comment on our YouTube videos, and you can obviously leave your ratings and reviews, especially on Spotify, which we’re lagging.
We’re way behind on Spotify.
But I’m now starting to listen to our episodes just to, you know, listen to the sound of my own voice on Spotify.
But the point is, wherever you listen, definitely leave a review and a rating.
It helps us reach a wider audience.
I really appreciate you doing that.
And obviously, we’ve got the Telegram thread.
So today, we are going to be talking about email delivery.
We haven’t talked about email in a long time.
You and I have had experiences.
This is the beauty of running an agency: you experience real-world stuff and real-world problems during the week.
And this one we’re actually doing at the end of the week.
I had so many issues this week with lead scoring, lead quality, emails.
So let’s get into the big topics here today.
Also, there are going to be some updates that are going to be occurring about deliverability for email.
You had sort of a breakthrough this week, or like you were talking to a prospective client that had a very common email issue, which, if you’re listening to the show, chances are you probably have the same thing.
Because at some point in time, you probably collect an email in your customer journey.
Yeah, oh for sure.
And like this is a conversation that if you are looking at serving your customer better, you need to pre-frame the quality of their existing list and then ensure that it’s quality.
Otherwise, if you’re starting from the top with trash and you’re allowing that in, you’re going to dilute your funnels, you’re going to frustrate your sales team, and you’re probably actually going to compound worse growth.
Because you’re signaling to the various algorithms that you want trash.
They’re going to be looking at it as trash in, trash out.
Let me optimize for it because you’re likely not setting up what success signals look like.
But more so, like what I was talking about with some of the brands you and I discussed before this was there’s so much money inside your existing email list.
You’ve already paid a buttload to get those individuals in there.
But are you capitalizing on what’s in there?
Are you talking to everyone the same way?
If someone’s bought from you once, they’ve bought from you more than once, or they’ve never bought from you again, they are 100% different types of individuals to talk to.
And we’ll see sales teams just call any and every, just hoping.
When you don’t have to hope, you can use different tactics to make it super clear who to talk to, when to talk to them, and then also make sure you’re only bringing in people that have signaled that they’re your ICP, your ideal client profile.
Right, right.
We’re not talking about like the broadcast email that you just send out to your entire list.
Like that’s fine.
Like most, we do that at least once a week.
But we segment out our emails very specifically.
We use HubSpot.
Viously, if HubSpot ever wants to sponsor this podcast and give us free HubSpot, that would certainly be great.
So if you’re listening, Mar, guys, you use HighLevel.
So, but like the problem that you had this week, you were talking to somebody, I think today, it was a sales call today, and they had a list of what?
It was 100,000, a few hundred thousand, a couple hundred thousand?
Yeah, and their problem was—and they’re coming to you specifically for—what was their issue?
Keeping in mind, like we’re saying there is money in the list and talking to each individual in a slightly different way.
Not maybe, you know, if you’ve got 200,000 people, you’re sending 200,000 individual emails, but you’re separating them out based upon set criteria.
So maybe you can go through that a little bit here.
Sure.
Well, I think so what brought the conversation to the table was knowing and understanding where their current revenue sources are and the differentiation between new and existing leads.
So obviously, they have paid traffic channels that are doing new lead acquisition, but they also have legacy lifecycle marketing in play.
And right now, that’s carrying the bulk of their business.
So the conversation was like two prongs, right?
So it’s one, which is really important, is who are you bringing into your database and what type of screening is happening beforehand so that you know with absolute certainty everyone in there should be in there?
You’re throwing a party, and it’s a nacho-based party, and someone says they don’t like nachos.
Well, uh, nacho welcome here.
I’m sure there’s a better—oh my, like nacho party.
But they should get the Cool Ranch instead of the nacho.
Yeah, wait, hold on.
Don’t even start.
Cool Ranch are the best Doritos.
I’ve only ever absolutely—yeah, the only time I’ve ever craved Doritos nacho-flavored non-Cool Ranch is when I’m on a plane and watching someone else eat a bag, and I’m hungry, and I don’t want to spend $81 for that same bag of chips.
But on the plane, I will.
Or they give you like a CH—now it’s like I feel like JetBlue all the time.
It’s like a cracker, pretzels, or like some kind of Sun Chip.
That’s what I can’t stand.
But if there was nacho cheese Doritos, I would grab that in a second.
But Cool Ranch are my favorite.
So anyway, very important topics here on Perpetual Traffic, as you were saying.
So we’re segmenting out.
So how would you do this?
Tell me how you do this.
Yeah, well, bringing in your lead quality is really important.
And so making sure you’re asking everyone before they get in, beyond just name, phone number, and email.
Because if you’re just getting name, phone number, and email, you might as well just buy or rent that list versus going after them.
You can be a bit more sophisticated to know and understand why they’re coming in.
And if you’re in an e-commerce brand or a service-based, and they’re coming into your subscriber list because they’ve purchased, you already have additional pieces.
So to one element, it’s really important to make sure you know who and what you want to know about a person before they enter your list.
And I’m not saying 12 to 20 things.
Like it’s three to five additional potential elements that could make a big difference.
If you have a sales team and they’re going to make the call, that’s one element.
So are you talking about the intake form, like the application page?
Not just like, “Oh, I’m opting in for a lead magnet or a checklist,” name and email.
Like you’re talking about what kind of sale are we talking about here?
We obviously, we’re creating a lead, and then that sales lead is then followed up with a sales team for a service product, etc.
Like give us some generalities here as to what we’re—
Yeah, well, high ticket, especially the higher the ticket, the more you want to know about that individual.
So the sales team is equipped to start a conversation and not a sales call.
So you want to have a few additional pieces.
But again, like if it’s a smaller, lower ticket, you might start with name, phone, email, and then you can use your email strategies to capture additional information such as their birthday, such as their favorite flavor of ice cream, which should not be vanilla because vanilla is the base of all ice cream flavors.
Like not just the ideal one.
We’ll fight you.
It’s cookie and cream is the best ice cream flavor.
But although I’m a big fan of French vanilla Breyers, by the way, but with chocolate sauce on top, just so we’re clear.
But you have to accessorize it because vanilla by itself is boring.
Yeah, it is a bit boring.
But you know, if there’s no chocolate sauce, I’m eating the ice cream no matter what.
Okay, so I’m going to challenge you a little bit on this.
Okay, all right.
So this is how I disagree with people.
You’re going to notice this about me.
Bring it on.
You say it should be just a couple of form fields.
Like a couple of form fields, in essence, I would disagree.
If you are running paid traffic and it is for a high intent or a high consideration purchase, meaning like we have a number of customers that we’ve tested the form, the contact form.
We’ve done this through Tier 11 too, which is one of the things that we need to be split testing even more.
We have two customers that basically, in order to get into their funnel and also to weed out a lot of the crap that’s on Google—and I believe John Moran has talked about this on the podcast prior—but you know, there’s a newer example of a newer business that we just started working with.
They have 17 fields.
Whoa!
And because it’s a high consideration purchase.
So like some of these are like steel buildings or outdoor kitchens—there are two examples.
And the reason why there’s, I believe there’s 30 fields for one and 17 for another is because it weeds out a lot of the spam leads that we would otherwise get from click farms, bots, you name it.
But also, if somebody is filling out a form and actually giving you the dimensions of the building that they want to build, and then that goes into Salesforce or HubSpot—it’s actually HubSpot in this particular case—like that is a high-quality lead, especially if they give location, they give all this information.
Sure.
So what ends up happening is that we pay a higher lead cost, but the likelihood of closing is that much greater.
So therefore, both sides, both worlds start working together.
And this is where, you know, the addition of like somebody like a John Moran or a highly intelligent media buyer looks at, “I don’t care about getting leads.
All I care about is getting high-quality leads that will ultimately lead to sales.”
So I would much rather pay $300 for a lead like this as opposed to $30 if they fill out all the things.
Like in one particular case, they have to figure out and do like this graphical dimension diagram of like what they want their outdoor kitchen to look like.
So it’s like it’s to the point where they’ve qualified all the way through.
And then it’s very easy if we go through their HubSpot or their Salesforce or whatever it is, HighLevel.
You can actually, as a media buyer or as an agency or as a consultant, or if you’re the VP of sales, the VP of marketing, very easily look and see like what kind of quality of lead is coming in.
And then also point to your salespeople and say, “Well, you know, this guy filled out 17 form fields, and he’s from right down the street, and he wants a building that’s 120 by 30 with three garage doors.
Like this is a great lead.
Why haven’t they booked?”
Yeah, why haven’t you been on them as of yet?
So I think so much is about the marketing world and the behind-the-click merging together.
And that’s where things really get interesting.
And I think from a lead perspective, those are a hell of a lot better than somebody who just fills in a form like, “Oh, I want a price quote.”
Like you can get those all day long, right?
But the more form fields, in my opinion, the better.
But you have to explain that to the customer.
I agree.
I agree.
I just, for the more you can ask, the better because you’re higher qualifying, and the sales and marketing sales handoff is much stronger.
For me, I disagree when someone’s like, “I’m just going to do name, phone, email.”
And you need to start introducing at least one or two form fields.
Are they a business owner?
Do they have a website?
I would argue that some of those form fields—because 17 is a lot, okay?
But if that works for you, like I ask 12 on a lot of our Facebook forms.
But for some of those, I would actually say that you can leverage referral source or the page that they’re coming into and add additional hidden form fields based off of, okay, in your instance, are they entering from a patio-specific page or an outdoor-specific page versus a concrete garage?
Whatever the different—you can add additional hidden form fields.
But yeah, I agree with you to have more form fields.
I just disagree with just asking for name, phone number, email in today’s day and age.
Like who cares?
I firmly believe, and I’ve said this before, and I was like, “I hope it’s okay,” but like I think leads are horseshit.
I don’t care.
I don’t want your name, email, phone number.
What I want is proof of life and a dialogue.
Because if you’re just going to sit and waste time sitting in my CRM, getting our marketing emails and not interact with my business, I’d rather not right now.
Yeah, I mean, there’s—depends on what your—I mean, I think there are different things.
There’s like, for example, for what I would refer to as like a transitional lead magnet.
It’s not like it’s the big thing that you want.
Like we want people to fill out the application, you know, on the Tier 11 site.
And we just redid our website.
We had a transitional call to action, which is a Don Miller—like he’s actually been on the podcast.
We should probably have him back.
He was outstanding.
A huge fan of StoryBrand.
If you haven’t read that book, we’ll leave links in the show notes for that.
If you’re a marketer, if you’re a VP of marketing, read the freaking book.
Like we should make that our next book club book.
Like we’re finishing Hormozi’s “100 Million Dollar Leads” right now.
We should do that one next.
Yeah, which I just finished, by the way, and it was really good.
So anyway, the point is, is that I think there are some people that are not going—they’re going to hit your site, and if you have 32 fields or you have a step interactive kitchen layout design with a 3D view form field, which is what our customer actually has, it’s great because they are fully committed.
If you go all the way through it from kitchen layout to appliance layout to appliances to 3D view, like they’re in it.
But the flip side of that is that some people aren’t going to want to do it.
So that’s where I think where you’re talking about like that transitional lead magnet.
If you’re not ready to commit for the big form, you have a separate lead magnet or something that is a transitional call to action, which I believe should be really like name and email at the very least.
And that’s a much different sequence, like from an email perspective.
For sure, for sure.
Because you’re talking about a sales-ready lead and a brand solution interested lead.
But I would say that on that lead magnet and such, still ask at least one additional question.
If you’re like, “Hey, are you a homeowner or a business owner?
Is it like a commercial property or real estate property you’re looking at expanding this kitchen property to?
Is it a rental property you’re looking to—whatever.”
I would just add, you know, at least one more qualifying question before you allow someone access to the lead.
And then to the point of like how this is relevant for emails is where I really find success that a lot of people are missing out on is what happens after the click.
Such that the first email that they get is delivering what they’re asking for but should also have an ask, which should be replying to your email.
Because I need proof of life, and I need a conversation started.
So like something that we do is every first email that someone gets in their onboarding series, we want to ask a question—a super simple question—to get them to reply, which goes into how do we mitigate what’s been happening since February and April and what’s coming June 1st with further emails.
But we always want to make that first experience one where we’re delivering what we promised and asking a really super simple question that they’re going to hit reply to to help our sending reputation and proof of life.
So give me an example.
Like what’s one—oh, can you name without naming names?
I mean, I don’t know.
Like this is like our third show together.
If you don’t want to name names, that’s fine.
I won’t name names, but you can say like in the general sense like what industry it is and like what the question is and how people can kind of take that.
Because I think that’s brilliant right there because you want to be able to get that initial—like you’re at the zero moment of truth, right?
Like there’s another book, ZMOD.
Go read that one.
I think it’s from like one of the founders of Google.
Point is, is like when they’re hot, that’s the time when you want to interact, and you want to get email deliverability up.
So what kind of question would you ask like after that initial opt-in?
And maybe give an example.
Sure.
So if your initial opt-in is something lead magnet and it’s top of funnel, I would ask a really basic question.
Is this something you’d like us to follow up on with you in the next few days?
And asking them, “Hey, would you like us to follow up with you on that in the next few days?”
Just let us know.
You’re inviting the conversation.
You’re signaling that you’re likely going to reach out.
And we’ll see more often than not someone to say, “Hey, not right now.
I’m just checking it out.”
So giving someone the opportunity to say whether or not they want to be followed up is proof of life and acknowledgment that they got the darn thing.
H. That’s a super good tip.
So would you do that for basically any type of lead magnet download, ebook?
Like is there any sort of rules along those lines that where we deviate?
Yeah, I like deviating to where it’s most relevant.
So for an example, in the food industry, we have a brand that we work with where we’re actually asking them what is their favorite recipe.
So we’re asking them how are they going to use or what is their current favorite recipe for them to send us back their beverage recipe of choice.
Because then we know, are they coffee drinkers, tea drinkers, smoothie drinkers, alcoholic drinkers, non-alcoholics?
We just simply ask them, “What is your favorite Bevy of choice?”
I believe is the question we have.
So knowing that allows us to know a lot more about that consumer.
And then based off of that reply, the team that’s monitoring that can update a custom field for preferred beverage type, to which then we can start sending that tag.
They’re set up, you say alcoholic, so we put—sorry, they’re not alcoholic.
Their preferred beverage is one with alcohol.
So the content we’re sending in their new onboarding sequence, so we get their recipe book right away, which has this large collection of different recipes.
And they get their first onboarding series, which is lead magnet specific.
But then we have a workflow based off of that specific tag if they provided that to us.
We give them the brand onboarding experience with an extension of recipes to that specific preference.
Got it.
If they do not reply, then they get the generic brand onboarding experience that provides a longer, “Hey, here’s some testimonials about us.
Here’s our founder story.
Here’s whatever the information is.”
So that they’re not just getting one or two emails about the lead magnet.
They’re getting an indoctrination.
Is a recipe book?
Recipe book.
Okay, when is that delivered?
Is that on the thank you page, or is that delivered on email as the first email?
Or no?
Good question.
It depends on which source they came from.
We have it available on a thank you page, but we always actually hide more.
The one that’s on the thank you page is never the full version.
We tell them they have to check their email or SMS, wherever that delivery format is, to get the real one.
Because I need to make sure that they’re going to see the question to reply to.
So we’ll give them some—give them a taste.
If we’re delivering on the landing page, but never the full option, I need them to check their email.
Interesting.
Okay, and then that first email that you do send that asks them their favorite beverages or what’s your Bevy of choice, like what’s the response rate on that?
In most—in this particular case, that’s a good question.
I don’t have the number of response rates, but I can tell you that the week we implemented it, it was a surprising number of respondents.
People were surprised.
Like the customer service team was like, “Wow, hey, who—this is—who look at all these responses.”
It’s not everyone.
It’s for sure not everyone.
But everyone that is responding has basically told us the 17-questionnaire essentially hurdle that we’ve had them jump over.
Because now, depending on if they’re giving us more information, we can start a dialogue with them.
We might get what their Instagram is, and we can start uniting that contact’s profile to have a lot more synchronicity.
So that when we’re talking to them, we’re talking to them as a person, not as a lead in our list.
Got it.
And if they don’t respond, they get the generic sequence, which is like the welcome sequence, founder story, all that.
Makes sense.
After they get the lead magnet.
So we have two different types of onboarding sequences because there are people that show up and sign up on the site to be a subscriber.
They always get the generic one.
But if anyone ever comes in for a lead magnet specifically, they get the lead magnet onboarding series.
And then they’re added to the generic onboarding series, which often usually has that first email adjusted a little bit, right?
Because they’ve already—it’s not like, “Welcome to the brand.”
They’ve already got, you know, maybe two or three emails by this point.
Got it.
Got it.
And it’s immediate, the delivery of that first email when they sign up?
Yeah, good question.
It depends because where did they sign up from?
Did they sign up on mobile or did they sign up from desktop?
If we know that they signed up from mobile, they’re actually getting a text message first.
If they signed up from desktop, they’re going to get the email first.
Because I want to get them where they physically are.
That’s pretty good.
So you obviously, part of your form field is a phone number as well?
Always, always, always, always.
And the goal of this one, like what’s the upsell sequence?
If it’s, you know, recipes, favorite beverage, where is the money made?
Discount code to the products they use to make these beverages.
Got it.
Or discounts to the complimentary snacks to serve with these beverages.
It’s a food and beverage line, so it’s encouraging them to consume, and then it’s offering them a discount to try if they haven’t already bought it.
And then the next piece of something—I feel bad, like I can go super deep and super granular because I have so much more to say on that onboarding sequence.
But in that post-purchase, if we get them to buy, there’s a difference.
Because think about it this way.
All right, I’m a director of marketing.
I’m a VP of marketing.
I’m a CEO.
Like I’m thinking to myself as you’re talking, do we go this deep in my sequence?
Like if you’re listening to this and you have a department that does this, or maybe you have an agency that does this, you want to make sure that they are doing this.
Tell me about like personnel needed for this because in a lot of cases, like we might be dealing with, in the case of like some of the examples that I used before, it might be a small team, two, three salespeople, could be an entire call center, you know, 40, 50 closers.
Do you hire like an ASR or a BDR, a business development rep, in addition to like your closer person in order to be able to do this?
Or should this fall into the purview?
What’s different?
People have different opinions of this.
I’d love to know what your opinion is.
And my sales guy would say something very different, but sure.
Like who should it be?
Should it be the closer, the guy who’s doing—or gal who’s putting the proposals together, closing the deals, signing the contracts?
Or is this something that you should, you know, get an intern to do, get a BDR, get some kid out of college?
Like if we’re talking about VPs and marketing here that are doing this, and I know there are a lot that are listening, they’re like, “All right, this sounds all great, but I can’t get my VP of sales to do something like this.”
What’s your sense?
Like who should be doing it?
It should not be the salesperson that’s implementing it.
You should have someone that’s like your CTO, your tech team, your automation expert, your email person.
They should be building in the automations for—because I don’t want the sales team to break anything or get overwhelmed.
Like that’s not what they’re here to do.
So that’s the tech side.
Salespeople out of that, 100%.
That can be your intern.
That can be the email—it’s someone who feels savvy enough to build workflows and make sure if this, then that.
I will say it is rare to have a salesperson who actually understands automation.
And I can’t believe this, but like the guy that we have that does our automations is actually a really good salesperson too.
But that’s a unicorn because most times that does not occur.
Right, right.
At least in my—I mean, I’ve hired hundreds of salespeople.
They all suck at tech.
You know, they have opportunities to grow.
I don’t want them to be good at tech.
I want them to be good at conversations, empathy building, and everything else.
At the same time, though, like a lot of our automation team members are techy individuals, maybe more introverted or not have the soft skills to communicate this to clients.
So you should have, whether their personality or whatever, have a tech-savvy individual set up these workflows.
It’s not rocket science, but it does need to connect your ESP, CRM, or if you’re using them both in the same—that’s why we use HighLevel.
Making sure that everything lives in an if-this-then-that.
I think the VP of marketing or the person, the strategic marketer, has a responsibility to clarify what is the vision.
Why are you sending this email?
Why are you sending this text?
Why are you giving away this lead magnet?
You need to make sure you define what success is and what the point of all this is.
So you know that success looks like they’ve gotten on our calendar.
Success looks like they’ve used this coupon code and purchased one of the products.
Success looks like not opening, not clicking, but consuming that content and taking the action you’re asking them to do.
So that then if you know what you want them to do, if they do it, then what’s going to happen?
Which is where the marketer, the VP of marketing generally is the one that will define that, or the strategic marketer on the team will say, “We are doing this because insert X, Y, and Z.”
The automation or the techy person will make sure that, you know, it’s implemented, that they put the hands, put the things in place.
And then the salesperson is the one that’s going to have a list, make sure that that list is in priority order because the tech person said, “Hey, 25, add it to their queue.”
And then maybe if they’ve been on this page and their, you know, fifth time they’ve tried booking an appointment, you can give them point value, and you can add weight to where it shows up on the sales team.
But the sales team individual has an obligation to follow up when you’ve established if this, then that, then make contact.
Would this job—the job of the automation is if you have a unicorn salesperson techie that’s amazing, but I wouldn’t expect that there is going to have to be the technical component to set up the automations and to set up the sequences for the follow-up for the manual follow-up prior to actually—like almost like in a setter kind of environment.
I refer to it as a BDR.
Some people call SDR.
The point is, can that person also be like your social media manager or a customer service person, in your opinion?
Okay, or is it differing skills?
Like everybody—somebody who’s listening to the show is like, “This sounds great, but oh, I got to hire another person to do yet another thing, and that’s going to hit me on the bottom line, or I’m going to get in trouble with the boss.
I don’t have that in the budget.”
Sure, it’s like, is there a way to cross-reference if you already have folks?
Well, at least what have you seen in your experience?
So in my experience, cross-functionality doesn’t always work.
Ideally, you have someone that can come in, and maybe they’re on social media, and they can intersect.
And if you have tech partners like a gorgeous or some sort of solution where all email replies—like if you’re sending from a marketing email, if the from email is like a support at mongusmedia.us, you have something where your social media, your customer service team can engage, and then they can signal, and they have that two-way conversation with the sales team to signal, “Hey, look at this.
This is really important.”
And maybe, depending on your business, you have your customer service team have an opportunity of a chance at that sale.
Maybe they’re getting a 2% to 3% percentage of that sale because they’ve worked the lead in that setter kind of capacity.
But in my personal experience, I don’t want a Jane or Jack of all trades.
I want a specific worker bee for one where I’m bringing on someone that they know and understand, make which is our preferred web hug partner, and they know and understand the different tech partners we’re using and that they’re setting it up.
And we’re defining what success looks like.
Everyone has brought their opinions to the table, and then that’s what they’re doing.
I’m not bringing them on for a full-time 40-hour week individual item if it is a singular purpose.
I’m all for singularity in that, my personal experience.
Yeah, the reason I asked the question is because I struggle with that.
Because when I get asked that, it depends.
I hate the answer, it depends.
But it’s a social media manager.
At the end of the day, like I say this all the time for everybody at Tier 11, it’s like everyone here is in sales.
You people are all in sales.
You’re constantly selling our customers on our value.
You’re selling them to help them bring—come in.
They pay your—all our customers pay your salaries, live a nice lifestyle, yada, yada, yada, whatever.
The point is, is I actually look at the social media manager as like a salesperson.
It’s like it’s your job to persuade and engage, right?
Like the engagement is part of social media, but then ultimately there is a goal here.
It’s not just to have nice comments and have lots of engagement.
Ultimately, it’s to sell [ __ ].
Yeah, right?
And if that’s the case, then I think, you know, there’s probably folks that are listening that say, “All right, I have a social media manager, and maybe I can double duty on this.”
Because, you know, social media, like for a midsize company, if that’s a full-time position, like come on, you’re not that busy.
You can take on other things.
But maybe if you incentivize them, you know, for sure, like that might change the whole paradigm.
And now you’re really thinking like, all right, I agree with you that there are certain skills.
Like it’s hard to find somebody that’s good at client success, media buying, creative, data attribution, email, SMS.
Like that’s a unicorn.
That’s probably an agency owner, in my opinion.
Like or an agency owner in the making.
Or an agency owner in the making.
That’s fine.
But like your employees aren’t going to be that.
So I do think that there is some crossover here.
You can get creative with who does what because I think this is so important.
This is so not discussed, and it’s so lost.
It’s like everyone focuses on CPL and all the other sorts of things.
Like who gives a [ __ ]?
Cost per lead?
I don’t care about cost per leads.
I don’t care about leads.
I care about conversations.
And to the component, like literally a conversation I was having right before we started recording this is where, okay, going to the social media manager—sorry, I’m going to get on like a really quick component of this.
I think a lot of the people that bring on like small to midsize businesses are using the term social media manager when they actually mean a social media coordinator.
And I think a lot of the times if you can make that incentive—like we were looking at a client’s account, looking at their Facebook ads, looking at their organic social content, and seeing people requesting sales help in the comments.
And a conversation that I’m going to be jumping on immediately after this is, “Hey, how might we incentivize those individuals, and how do we make sure that that’s at the top of their hierarchy and priority list?”
So our solution is we’ve built this whole AI bot to cover the stuff that is not sales-related.
And then all those sales-identified pieces, we signal, and we have a workflow that it gets escalated to the appropriate people.
Because you’re right, everyone on the team is in sales.
I would just, you know, invite you to think—and if you have a social media manager, are they actually fulfilling the role of a social media manager, or are they a glorified social media coordinator?
Don’t know.
I mean, that’s going to be a question that, you know, the listener has to answer for themselves.
And if you do have somebody, like even having this conversation, say, “Hey, you know, listen to this episode of Perpetual Traffic and let me know what you think.”
Is this—you can try it out and see if it works.
If it doesn’t work, like at least you now know.
But at least you are focusing in on—like we used to say this all the time.
It’s like who cares about likes and shares and comments?
What we want is sales.
And we had a customer—like we took from—they were spending 30 grand a month to three million a month just on Meta.
And then all her accounts got banned for like something that like went all the way up to like the Sheryl Sandberg level back when she was at Meta, but was Facebook back then.
But anyway, the point was is that the number one question, the number one comment, “Where can I buy this?”
The number one—and the social media coordinator manager, all their job was is to just put in the link literally where they can buy it.
And then we figured out a way to pin it at the top.
Yeah.
And then all of a sudden, we’re like, “Why is this ad doing so well?”
Like because it answers the number one question that they had.
It was like an 11-minute video of like all the great things that this product did.
And then they’re like, “Well, where do I buy it?”
Even though the link is right there, and then it’s like, you know, learn more or buy now is on the freaking ad, you know, whatever.
People are kind of stupid most of the time.
I’m not going to negate that component, Ralph, but like think about it.
They might be scrolling through the comments.
Like I tell everyone when we start running ads for them, you have to treat your comments on these ads like sales, not like customer service.
And if there are ones that are worth it and good, try to get the founder or the team, the visible face of the company, to reply.
A 10-second reply as a video because people look at comments on ads the way they look at reviews on Amazon.
And no one buys a product on Amazon without reading a review first.
So someone might have been so far down the comments that they didn’t scroll back up.
So that’s where I would just—
Right, be kind.
But that is so important.
Yeah, like that’s so lost.
So I’m glad we’re talking about this.
Last part of this is if you’re running paid traffic to this and you have a multi-step funnel, you have a multi-step customer journey, customer acquisition path, whatever you want to call it, how do you optimize, and where do you—what event do you optimize for?
I know the answer is probably it depends, of course, but let’s give an example maybe for the drink recipe one because I think that’s a good one.
It’s like when you’re running ads for that, I assume it’s painted media in most cases.
Okay, is it for the opt-in or is it for when they actually buy?
All right.
Oh, this is really good.
There you go.
So again, it depends.
Now we’re getting somewhere on what you have available to your resources.
But you can actually, depending on where you’re getting that conversion event, so if you’re using an instant form, if you’re using whatever different event, you can add a custom conversion where you can actually optimize for that they clicked on that email.
But this is like super ninja-level strategy.
Clicked on the email, I want—yeah, I told you proof of life.
I don’t care that you’re a lead.
That’s killer for all—for all of you [ __ ] fans.
We have a new star.
I actually wouldn’t have even thought of that.
That’s freaking brilliant.
Huh?
I recognize that if your first email is asking for a reply, that can be something different.
So I bring that in where, again, it depends.
But you can optimize for the click on the email, not the lead, because that shows proof of life.
So there you go.
If you made it all the way to the end of the episode, and you don’t want to implement some of the other easier things, and you’ve got a really strong media buyer, optimize for the click on that email.
Proof of life, custom conversion.
That’s fantastic.
The only one that’s better than that—if you’re listening to this, you’re like, “I don’t have one of those.”
Like we just spoke with, you know, one of the keys to a really high ticket selling for us is offline conversions because it’s so expensive.
And it depends, but in a lot of cases, like for example, we were talking to a personal injury lawyer yesterday.
I was like, “What do you want?
Do you want leads or do you want signed cases?”
Signed cases usually means that’s money for the firm.
Like it might take anywhere from three months to three years to get the settlement, but in their state, the average settlement is 30 grand.
Okay, so there’s probably, if it’s a signed case, there’s a 90% chance because of their screening team is they’re going to actually make money.
So we figured this out with—I’ll leave links in the show notes for a case study that we did a while back.
The point was is like we created over a hundred million worth of settlements based upon optimizing for signed cases, which is an offline conversion event you can use with a 90-day window inside Google as opposed to just leads.
And this client, their biggest [ __ ] in their current agency was they’re getting us—they got us 600 leads, and we got six signed cases.
I was like, she’s like, “Well, what can you guys do?”
And I said, “Well, I know I can get you a lot of leads, but I would much rather get you, you know, 10 leads and six signed cases.
Wouldn’t you like that?”
She’s like, “Yeah, that’s what I want.”
So optimize for the thing that you’re going to—in that particular case, you know, we’re running a lot of traffic, and you’re getting tons of conversion versions, so it’s feeding the algorithm.
You might not be in that case.
Maybe it’s a longer sales cycle.
Maybe it’s a longer window.
It might be 60, 90 days out.
It might be beyond like the 90-day conversion window that you can do on Google.
Now on Facebook for offline conversions for optimization, the point is, is you’ve got to optimize the thing that really gives you, in your case, sign of life or proof of life.
And for these guys, it was a signed case.
But for a lot of you, it might be listening, it might just be, “Did they respond to my first email?”
Because that means you’ve got a live one, and that’s an indication of somebody who might potentially purchase.
So killer stuff here, Lauren Petrullo.
So where can people find you, by the way?
I always say this, like where do they connect with Lauren E. Petrullo, which I don’t even know what the E stands for, by the way.
Should we guess?
We make it like an attic solution.
Elizabeth?
Edgar?
No.
Ed.
Hi everyone, my name is Lauren Edgar P.
So nice to meet you all.
Elise?
No.
All right, well, over in the Telegram thread, PerpetualTraffic.com/telegram, try to guess what Lauren’s middle name is.
We’ll see how many people actually guess it right.
And then you’ll have to give somebody a prize or a pat on the back or a thumbs up or something like that over on Telegram.
So where do you—what’s the best way to connect with you?
I’m Lauren Petrullo on all the socials, but right now the one I’m on the most this week is Instagram.
It changes.
It’s always a week-by-week case.
Yeah, yeah, it’s true.
I’m kind of all over the place.
Like I’ll do—I’m on Instagram this week.
I haven’t done anything on LinkedIn.
I always say connect me on LinkedIn, and then I get like, you know, 1,000 LinkedIn requests and lots of spam people trying to sell me stuff.
But that’s okay.
Love you all too.
Make sure that you subscribe and leave a rating wherever you’re listening, especially you Spotify people.
You’re very quiet over there.
I’m talking to you.
And go back and listen to previous episodes.
We’ll obviously leave this—all the links in for today’s show.
There are multiple ones over at PerpetualTraffic.com.
If you haven’t subscribed to our YouTube channel, we’ll leave links in the show notes there.
That’s PerpetualTraffic.com/YouTube.
We’ve already talked about the Telegram channel enough.
Enough is enough there.
On behalf of my awesome co-host, Lauren Petrullo, ciao until next show.
See you!